Sunday 9 February 2020 7–8.45pm Barbican

LSO SEASON CONCERT SHOSTAKOVICH NINTH SYMPHONY

Prokofiev Symphony No 1, ‘Classical' ProkofievViolin Concerto No 1 NOSEDA Interval Mussorgsky Prelude to ‘Khovanshchina’ Shostakovich Symphony No 9

Gianandrea Noseda conductor Roman Simovic violin Welcome News On Our Blog

After the interval, Mussorgsky’s folk- It is with much sadness that the LSO heard BEETHOVEN 250 TIMELINE infused Prelude to the opera Khovanshchina of the recent death of Caroline O’Neill, a builds on our season theme of ‘roots and gifted viola player who was a loyal guest Discover key moments in the life and work of origins’, and the concert concludes with musician with the LSO over many years. this musical titan. Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony, a work She had battled bravely with an illness written in the closing moments of World for an extended period, and toured with CLASSIC FM RECOMMENDED CONCERTS: War II and which also refers back to an the Orchestra on many occasions before SPRING 2020 earlier era, described by Gianandrea Noseda and during this time. Her cheerful, bright as Shostakovich at his ‘most Classical’. personality and optimism will be missed We are proud to have been Classic FM’s by everyone who knew her. Our sympathies Orchestra in the City of London for over I hope you enjoy tonight’s concert, and that are with her husband, LSO First Violin 17 years. Don’t miss our round-up of Classic elcome to tonight’s LSO concert you will join us again soon. At the end of the Colin Renwick, and her family. FM’s recommended concerts for spring and at the Barbican. We are delighted month, Elim Chan conducts the Orchestra in a look at where the music sits in the history to welcome back Principal Guest Ravel and Rachmaninov, alongside a recent DONATELLA FLICK LSO of the LSO. Conductor Gianandrea Noseda for this work by Elizabeth Ogonek and a premiere by CONDUCTING COMPETITION performance, as he continues his cycle of Panufnik composer James Hoyle. • lso.co.uk/more/blog Shostakovich’s symphonies, a major project Applications are now open for the 16th that began in 2016 and is being recorded for Donatella Flick LSO Conducting Competition WELCOME TO TONIGHT’S GROUPS future release on LSO Live. in 2021, founded in 1990 by Donatella Flick and celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. Tracy Hall and friends Tonight’s programme opens with pieces showing two sides to Prokofiev: the First Kathryn McDowell CBE DL • lso.co.uk/more/news Please ensure all phones are switched off. Symphony, with its witty references back to Managing Director Photography and audio/video recording the era of Haydn and Mozart, and the more are not permitted during the performance. Romantic Violin Concerto No 1. LSO Leader Roman Simovic’s performance as soloist for this Concerto has been eagerly awaited, after he stepped in at the last minute to play Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with Gianandrea Noseda in 2019 – saving the day with half an hour’s notice.

2 Welcome 9 February 2020 Tonight’s Concert In Brief Coming Up

peaking of Shostakovich’s Ninth PROGRAMME CONTRIBUTORS Saturday 15 February 7pm Sunday 1 March 7pm Symphony, Gianandrea Noseda LSO St Luke’s Barbican says, ‘I can really feel his wish David Nice writes, lectures and broadcasts to go against what was expected of him.’ on music, notably for BBC Radio 3 and LSO DISCOVERY SYMPHONIC GOSPEL SPIRIT Composers including Dvořák, Beethoven, BBC Music Magazine. His books include SOUNDHUB SHOWCASE: PHASE II Bruckner and Mahler completed their studies of Strauss, Elgar, Tchaikovsky Orchestral arrangements of gospel classics catalogue of symphonies with a ninth, so and Stravinsky, and a Prokofiev biography, Composers on Phase II of LSO Discovery’s and André J Thomas' celebratory Mass. by 1945, there were big expectations. What From Russia to the West 1891–1935. Soundhub scheme showcase new music, Shostakovich wrote, though characteristic, joined by LSO musicians. André J Thomas conductor is one of his smallest symphonies and is Andrew Stewart is a freelance music NaGuanda Nobles soprano indebted to the neo-Classical stylings of journalist and writer. He is the author of LSO Soundhub is generously supported by Jason Dungee tenor composers like Prokofiev and Stravinsky. The LSO at 90 and contributes to a variety Susie Thomson Brandon Boyd piano of specialist classical music publications. London Adventist Chorale Prokofiev’s First Symphony, the ‘Classical’, Thursday 27 February 7.30pm Community choirs from around London opens the concert, before violinist Roman Andrew Huth is a musician, writer and Barbican Simovic plays the composer’s lyrical First translator who writes extensively on French, Saturday 7 March 2.30pm Violin Concerto, with slow outer movements Russian and Eastern European music. DAPHNIS AND CHLOE Barbican and a quick scherzo at its heart. Although the concerto was not performed until 1922, James Hoyle Thymiaterion (world premiere) * LSO DISCOVERY it was (like the First Symphony) drafted in Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No 3 FAMILY CONCERT: 1917, a year of revolution in Russia. Neither Elizabeth Ogonek All These Lighted Things HOW TO BUILD AN ORCHESTRA piece expresses themes of political upheaval – three little dances for orchestra on its surface. Ravel Daphnis and Chloe – Suite No 2 When it comes to making music, there's nothing for it like an orchestra. Learn how In contrast to Prokofiev’s angular melodies Elim Chan conductor the instruments come together to make on- and sarcastic Classical style is the earnest, Lukáš Vondráček piano stage magic. Suitable for ages 7 to 12. Romantic mood of Mussorgsky’s Prelude, composed for the unfinished opera *Commissioned through the Panufnik Composers Jessica Cottis conductor Khovanshchina. Evoking dawn over Scheme, generously supported by Lady Hamlyn Rachel Leach presenter Moscow, it was orchestrated by the and The Helen Hamlyn Trust composer’s friend Rimsky-Korsakov. Recommended by Classic FM

Tonight’s Concert 3 Sergei ProkofievSymphony No 1 in D major Op 25, ‘Classical’ 1917 / note by David Nice

1 Allegro then they’ll kick up a fuss about a new The simple fact is that in the early part of joyful that it might, he thought, ‘verge on 2 Larghetto Prokofievian audacity, to the effect that he the year, Prokofiev was reasonably confident the indecently irresponsible’. He completed 3 Gavotte (Non troppo allegro) wouldn’t leave Mozart to rest in peace and about the upheavals. During the February the orchestration that September in his 4 Finale (Molto vivace) grabs at him with his dirty hands, smearing revolution he had been in Petrograd, as mother’s favoured southern health resort pure Classical pearls with his Prokofievian his alma mater St Petersburg had been of Yessentuki. y 1917, the young Prokofiev was dissonances, but true friends will understand renamed in World War I, dodging the bullets known to his fellow Russians, that the style of my symphony is simply true on street corners, and he was glad to get The premiere, which Prokofiev conducted if not as yet to the world at Mozartian Classicism and will appreciate it, out of the ‘foul city’ in the spring. Yet as the the following April in Petrograd just before large, as the impudent composer of spicy while the public will probably just be glad diaries reveal, the ‘happy optimism’ of his his departure for the US, proved plain piano miniatures rife with nose-thumbing that it is uncomplicated and cheerful and character welcomed the form of provisional sailing, even though he had anticipated ‘wrong’ notes, of two piano concertos in will surely applaud it.‘ government proposed by the revolutionaries. some antagonism from the ‘Revolutionary which his own talents as a virtuoso were orchestra’. It was a success, pure and simple. more extensively served, and of a raucous Everyone, after all, took Prokofiev’s orchestral work, the Scythian Suite, drawn — self-styled ‘pure Mozartian Classicism’ at from a ballet rejected by the impresario ‘True friends will understand that the style of my symphony is simply true face value; the lessons he had learnt from Sergei Diaghilev. his favourite professor Nikolai Tcherepnin – Mozartian Classicism and will appreciate it … ’ who inclined more to Haydn than Mozart – Prokofiev’s symphonic ambitions were aired — and from conducting of a student version in a three-movement student work of 1908, of The Marriage of Figaro had gone to good then scaled down in the bright and breezy It is, perhaps, not so extraordinary that He was buoyant, too, to find a place in the use. Our own interest is much less in the Sinfonietta the following year. He was never Prokofiev should be venturing into the kind country just a short distance from the dacha sonata-form workings of the Classical style a composer to repeat past successes, and of so-called neo-Classicism supposedly zone, where most Petrograders brought their than in the symphony’s youthful high spirits in the May 1917 entry from his revelatory ‘discovered’ by Stravinsky several years later city ways to bear on the peace and quiet. and surprising good humour. diaries, published now in an English with Pulcinella; after all, Tchaikovsky had Here, at a simple farm serving up healthy translation by Anthony Phillips (my own time-travelled long before in works like the food, he went walking and composed whole Its scoring is clean and clear, excelling in the is used here), he shows delight at how the Variations on a Rococo Theme and his opera stretches of the ‘Classical’ symphony that spry dialogues of strings and wind, with only ‘Classical’ symphony he has half-composed The Queen of Spades. What does seem odd May ‘without a piano’, exactly the kind of trumpets, horns and timpani used to ballast in his head might court controversy: is that the ‘Classical’ symphony should have experiment he thought could be applied to the handful of louder outbursts. Most of been produced in 1917, the year in which, ‘a rather simple thing like this symphony’. the themes slip comfortably if quirkily in ‘When our Classically oriented musicians according to Soviet hindsight, Prokofiev He resumed further work in June on his to neighbouring keys (usually in downward and professors (who are, to my mind, simply should have been capturing the spirit of return from a river cruise, scrapping the steps) before steering back to base. The pseudo-Classicists) hear this symphony, revolution with tense, nervous scores. original finale and replacing it with one so sidestepping is never at rest in the first

4 Programme Notes 9 February 2020 Sergei ProkofievIn Profile 1891–1953 movement’s chirruping second subject and Before he left for exile, Prokofiev completed the compact gavotte, the first movement IN BRIEF his ‘Classical’ symphony, a bold and appealing to be composed and later losing much of its Prokofiev’s Symphony No 1 was written work that revived aspects of 18th-century pointed wit as extended exit music in the in 1917 and premiered the following musical form, clarity and elegance. He 1935 score for Romeo and Juliet. year under the baton of its composer. received commissions from arts organisations It was well received, owing to its in the United States and France, composing The poised violin melody of the larghetto familiar ‘Classical’ style and high spirits, his sparkling opera The Love for Three seems more secure at first, but has to glide which were all the more appealing to a Oranges for the Chicago Opera Company back obliquely over the insistent intervening Russian audience otherwise burdened in 1919–20. His engagements as a recitalist chatter on its two returns; and what sounds by revolution and war. Prokofiev and concerto soloist brought Prokofiev to like the most Classical melody of them had composed this symphony as an a wide audience in Europe and the US, and all, the throwaway flute tune that is the experiment in writing away from the he was in great demand to perform his own last theme to make its appearance in the piano, and the result shows Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No 3. The ballet Romeo and finale, has a surprising source. It quotes distinctive musical personality, how Juliet and the score for Feinzimmer’s film the heroine’s innocent theme in Rimsky- he used older techniques and styles Lieutenant Kijé were among Prokofiev’s Korsakov’s 1882 opera The Snow Maiden, to sound fresh, vivid and precise. rokofiev was born in Ukraine and first Soviet commissions, dating from the no doubt as an affectionate memorial to was encouraged to study music early 1930s. Both scores were subsequently the older composer, but also as a tribute from an early age by his mother, cast as concert suites, which have become to the beauty of nature which inspired a keen amateur pianist. The young Sergei cornerstones of the orchestral repertoire. both works. • showed prodigious ability as both composer and pianist, gaining a place at the ‘The Fifth Symphony was intended as a St Petersburg Conservatory at the age of 13 hymn to free and happy Man, to his mighty and shortly thereafter acquiring a reputation powers, his pure and noble spirit’: Prokofiev for the uncompromising nature of his music. wrote these comments in 1944 as the According to one critic, the audience at the Russian army marched towards Berlin, 1913 premiere of the composer’s Second reflecting his sense of hope in the future. Piano Concerto was left ‘frozen with fright, Sadly, his later years were overshadowed by hair standing on end’. He left Russia after illness and the denunciation of his works as the 1917 Revolution, but decided to return ‘formalist’ by the Central Committee of the to Moscow with his wife and family 19 Communist Party in 1948. • years later, apparently unaware of Stalin’s repressive regime. Profile by Andrew Stewart

Composer Profile 5 Sergei ProkofievViolin Concerto No 1 in D major Op 19 1917 / note by Andrew Huth

1 Andantino foot of the Ural Mountains. He described the Years of displacement and uncertainty Prokofiev’s own opening melody, 2 Scherzo: Vivacissimo scenery to his friend Nikolai Myaskovsky as intervened before the concerto’s first predominantly sweet and dreamy rather 3 Moderato – Allegro moderato ‘wild, virginal and exceptionally beautiful, performance in Paris on 18 October 1923, than dark and dramatic like Sibelius’, runs with its red mountainous shores covered in with the 18-year-old leader of Serge for some 44 bars before dissolving its Roman Simovic violin dark Siberian pines’. Koussevitzky’s • orchestra, Marcel Darrieux, profile in low, irresolute trills. At first, the secondary material that follows, a gavotte ow could it have happened that rather more contorted than the one in the he did not hear the true music of — ‘Classical’ symphony, seems to come from a the Revolution?’ asks Prokofiev’s ‘In my view, the composer, just as the poet, the sculptor different world. Yet the magical negotiation dutiful Soviet biographer, Israel Nestyev, of back to the silk-spinning of the opening his subject’s role in the crucial year of 1917. or the painter, is in duty bound to serve man, the people. He must seems perfectly natural. This time, the It happened because the young composer beautify human life and defend it.’ flute takes over the melody in all its pristine spent very little time in the cities during beauty, while the harpist and soloist provide Prokofiev the turbulent months leading up to the yet a gleaming reflection which surely owes more crucial events that October. Both the — something to the magic of that summer Symphony No 1 (‘Classical’) and the First The virginal and the beautiful aspects could as soloist. ‘Now, to be sure, I’d do a lot of journey down the Kama, and the spell is Violin Concerto, alongside a new-found certainly be applied to the opening idea of it very differently’, Prokofiev told another cast even more wistfully at the end of passion for astronomy, occupied his calm the concerto, and yet this ‘beautiful, tender settler in Paris, the musicologist Pyotr the concerto. thoughts in the country so near to a turbulent theme’ had first occurred to Prokofiev as the Souvchinsky. What remains significant is the Petrograd, and yet so far from its unquiet start of a concertino back in August 1913. gentle tunefulness in a relatively early work Between these fugitive visions, Prokofiev spirit (he had, admittedly, toyed with the The second subject followed that November, by a composer regarded, whether in 1917 or entertains his listeners and the soloist with concerto while shooting carried on beneath though presumably the adagio he mentions in 1923, as a noise-making enfant terrible. Pure a scherzo – the movement he liked best in his window in the city that February). January 1914 was abandoned, or reallocated; song for the soloist at the very beginning 1923 – running wild with every conceivable the shock of the new when he saw Diaghilev’s of a violin concerto was nothing new, and violinistic effect: pizzicato, harmonics, Arguably it was the limpid purity of Russia’s Ballets Russes in London that summer (and the Parisian audience looked down its nose spiccato (or staccato bowing) and sul eastern rivers which found its way into the was asked to compose a hard-hitting score at one possible source of inspiration, the ponticello (playing close to the bridge of orchestration of the First Violin Concerto. for the impresario) made him ‘cool towards Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. It seems more the violin). The orchestration snaps back Travelling southwest to pick up a boat the lyricism of my Violin Concerto’. So only likely that Prokofiev had taken note of the with the resourcefulness of rushing clarinet along the Volga to Kazan, he decided with its aggressive scherzo took any kind of shape shimmering string support for the violinist figurations, pulsing horns and the baleful apparent spontaneity to explore the Kama before the nature idylls of 1917. in the opening bars of the Sibelius Concerto rearing of the tuba. Although the finale soon River. His detour took him as far east as the as well as the roving, seemingly improvised gives the impression of treading water quality of Sibelius’ melody. before the work’s initial haven can be

6 Programme Notes 9 February 2020 reached again, its opening sets up a tension • SERGE KOUSSEVITZKY between the violinist’s cantabile melody and the tick-tocking accompaniment – Serge Koussevitzky was a Russian-born BARTÓK anticipating the ambiguous slow movement conductor, publisher and champion WITH FRANÇOIS-XAVIER ROTH of the Second Violin Concerto by nearly of modern music. He published works & SIR SIMON RATTLE two decades. The affecting elaborations of by Scriabin, Prokofiev, Stravinsky and clarinet and flute in the final vision were Medtner. He emigrated from Russia in 1920. added in 1924 after early performances, While in Paris, he organised the Concerts Wednesday 18 March 6.30pm Wednesday 22 April 6.30pm Prokofiev told Myaskovsky, ‘because Koussevitzky, a summer concert series Barbican Barbican without some sort of divertissement like featuring new works by many composers, that it sounded dreadfully like the overture including Prokofiev, Ravel and Stravinsky. HALF SIX FIX: BARTÓK HALF SIX FIX [Wagner’s Prelude] to Lohengrin’. • He would go on to conduct the premieres THE WOODEN PRINCE CONCERTO FOR ORCHESTRA of Prokofiev’s Symphony No 2 (1925) and Symphony No 4 (1930) as conductor of the François-Xavier Roth Sir Simon Rattle conductor & presenter Boston Symphony Orchestra. conductor & presenter Recommended by Classic FM Recommended by Classic FM Thursday 23 April 7.30pm Thursday 19 March 7.30pm Barbican Barbican DUKE BLUEBEARD’S CASTLE THE WOODEN PRINCE Bartók Concerto for Orchestra Bartók Dance Suite Bartók Duke Bluebeard’s Castle Stravinsky Violin Concerto in D major Bartók The Wooden Prince Sir Simon Rattle conductor Rinat Shaham mezzo-soprano François-Xavier Roth conductor Gábor Bretz bass Interval – 20 minutes Isabelle Faust violin There are bars on all levels of the

Concert Hall; ice cream can be bought 6pm Barbican: Free pre-concert recital at the stands on Stalls and Circle level. with Guildhall Artists lso.co.uk/201920

7 Composer Profile 7 Modest Mussorgsky Prelude to ‘Khovanshchina’ (1874, orch Rimsky-Korsakov 1883) / note by Andrew Huth

late starter who died far too young, Unfortunately, it was also around this time Mussorgsky’s list of works features that Mussorgsky began to indulge in the several projects that were never uncontrolled drinking bouts that would kill properly started, soon abandoned or left him at the age of 42, leaving Khovanshchina incomplete. The biggest and most important incomplete and almost none of the music of these is the opera Khovanshchina. It is orchestrated. After Mussorgsky’s death, an immensely powerful work, but also his friend Rimsky-Korsakov prepared a infuriating for its waywardness and aching performing edition of the score, filling in gaps at vital parts of the structure. the gaps as best he could, orchestrating the music in his own subtle manner (very The year 1874 was a high point for Modest different from Mussorgsky’s rough-edged Mussorgsky. In February, shortly before his but effective style) and smoothing out much 35th birthday, his first completed opera of what he considered to be Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov was staged at the Mariinsky harshnesses in melody and harmony. Theatre in St Petersburg; in June, he Another edition, restoring some of the music composed his piano work Pictures at an cut by Rimsky-Korsakov, was commissioned Exhibition and in November, the song cycle from Shostakovich in 1958 for a film version Sunless. The success of Boris spurred him of the opera. to press on with the composition of another historical opera, this time dealing with the The Prelude, however, is substantially the conflicts in Russian society at the end of the same in both rival versions. It was one of the 17th century when Tsar Peter the Great was earliest pieces to be composed (as a piano about to take absolute power. Its unwieldy score) in September 1874. Act One of the title, Khovanshchina, refers to the intrigues opera is set in Moscow’s Red Square, and of the powerful Khovansky family, whose the Prelude is an evocation of dawn breaking private militias are confronted with the rock over the Moscow River. It is built out of a of religious fundamentalism, and with the folk-like melody, expressively extended and modernising tendencies of Tsar Peter and decorated, with the sinister tolling of bells his allies. hinting at grim events to follow. •

Konstantin Korovin's set design for Khovanshchina: Act I

8 Programme Notes 9 February 2020 Modest Mussorgsky In Profile 1839–81 / profile by Andrew Stewart

odest Mussorgsky was born in same year his government position was Despite financial support from a few Karevo, the youngest son of a declared ‘supernumerary’, a form of de facto remaining friends, he lapsed still further, wealthy landowner. His mother redundancy. Despite the associated loss of desperately declaring to one there was gave him his first piano lessons at the age of earnings, his artistic life developed decisively ‘nothing left but begging’. He was eventually six, and his musical talent was encouraged when he was referred to the kuchka (The Five), hospitalised in February 1881 after suffering at the Cadet School of the Guards in a group of Russian composers centred around a bout of alcoholic epilepsy. During a St Petersburg, where he began to compose Mily Balakirev. Soon afterwards, fired by the brief respite, around the date of his 42nd (despite having no technical training). ideas discussed in his new artistic circle, he birthday, Ilya Repin painted his famous began his opera Boris Godunov, which he portrait of the composer (pictured left), In 1857, he met Mily Balakirev, whom first completed in 1869 while working at the but within two weeks of the sitting, he persuaded to teach him, and shortly Forestry Department, and continued to revise Mussorgsky was dead. • afterwards he began composing in earnest. for several years. He started work on another The following year, Mussorgsky suffered major work, Khovanshchina, a little while later. an emotional crisis and resigned his army commission, but returned soon afterwards The first production ofBoris Godunov to his studies. He was, however, plagued in 1874 would prove to be the peak of by nervous tension, and this, combined Mussorgsky’s career. The Balakirev circle with a crisis at the family home after the had begun to disintegrate and he drifted emancipation of the serfs in 1861, stalled away from his old friends. In a letter to his development quite severely. By 1863, Vladimir Stasov, he described how bitterly though, he was finding his true voice, and he he felt, writing that ‘the Mighty Handful began to write an opera (never completed) has degenerated into soulless traitors’. based on Flaubert’s Salammbô. At this time, Around the same time, Mussorgsky’s friend he was working as a civil servant and living Viktor Hartmann (whose exhibition would in a commune with five other young men inspire Pictures) died, and his roommate also passionate about art and philosophy, Golenishchev-Kutuzov moved away. For a where he established his artistic ideals. time, he maintained his creative output, but now divested of many of his former friends, In 1865, his mother died; this probably Mussorgsky resumed drinking heavily. By caused his first bout of alcoholism. 1880, he was forced to leave government His first major work,Night on the Bare employment and became destitute. Mountain, was composed in 1867, the

Composer Profile 9 Dmitri Shostakovich Symphony No 9 in E-flat major Op 70 1945 / note by David Nice

1 Allegro heroic in character’, in this conclusion to in the shape of a trilling grimace, and the interconnected last three moments. 2 Moderato the trilogy ‘a transparent, pellucid, and second subject has a deadpan trombone Though instead of crashing into tragedy, this 3 Presto bright mood predominates’. Never for long, and side drum to introduce the piccolo’s scherzo burns out very quickly in depressive 4 Largo as it turns out. The symphony is in E-flat circus polka. Heightening the neo-Classical sighs from the strings – which, in turn, are 5 Allegretto major, the key of Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’, impression is an exposition repeat – the bludgeoned by unison brass at the beginning but any heroism is of the comically tinted only one in the 15 Shostakovich symphonies. of the fourth movement. The human plea is fter the apocalyptic austerity of opera buffa• variety, and the composer’s The development is more embattled, brass made by a bassoon in two free recitatives at his Eighth Symphony, arguably his definition of that is distinctly awry. baring their fangs at the climax, and in a the symphony’s lowest ebb. most towering masterpiece and higher-volume return to order, the trombone an expression of absolute horror composed The premiere that November, conducted by only succeeds in reinstating the polka theme In the Eighth Symphony, it was the clarinets in the thick of World War II, Shostakovich Shostakovich’s ideal interpreter Yevgeny on the fifth attempt – on solo violin – and who led us out of the darkness of the was expected to provide some kind of Soviet Mravinsky •, found praise from those there’s more sudden brutality before the devastating slow movement into C major victory ode in 1945. Apparently, he did start who linked it back to his earlier humour, final chord. light, after which a bassoon crawled out work on a choral symphony – reports exist of though there were also criticisms of its from under a stone. Here the bassoon does what the first movement, played through by grotesqueries. The Ninth’s nomination If Shostakovich’s metronome marks are all the hard work, rousing itself from utter the composer early that year, sounded like, for a Stalin Prize in 1946 did not result in observed, the second movement is not so desolation to a cautious and wry dance in ‘majestic in scale, in pathos’, according to his success. When composers were publicly much a slow one as a limping waltz, led by E-flat major in another finale which follows reliable musical friend Isaac Glikman – but humiliated and denounced as ‘formalists’ – clarinet solo, with muted strings moving in without a break. As in the two other faster abandoned it in favour of a short a multipurpose tag slapped on anything that chromatic steps towards several anguished movements, jollity soon disappears in an five-movement work. might not be easily understood by the Soviet peaks, and a genuine adagio, frozen by ominous build-up of tension. The drama people – in front of Stalin’s man Andrei the piccolo, only in the desolate final bars. becomes hysterical before the opening Sovietspeak still has its fallout in bizarre Zhdanov and the Central Committee of the So much for the brightness Shostakovich dance and its companion return in a parroting of Russian composers’ party-line Communist Party, the Ninth joined the Sixth described in his 1945 trailer. military parade that is both swaggering and statements: Prokofiev’s disingenuous and Eighth Symphonies as proscribed works. grotesque: the word can’t be avoided here, labelling of his Fifth Symphony’s victory- That might apply to the ensuing presto, and Shostakovich’s critics were right. to-parody trajectory, heard for the first Essentially the opening is Mozartian or something of a folk festival at first, time that same year, as ‘the triumph of Haydnesque in its buoyance, a downward in brilliant high frequencies. But a Then the music switches dramatically, and the human spirit’, for instance. In this case, arpeggio that’s an answer to the upwardly fierce trumpeter may remind us of the without a pause, into a hell-for-leather it was seen in Shostakovich’s declaration, mobile opening of Prokofiev’s ‘Classical’ Khachaturian parody which drops off the parade like the circus music that whirls the following completion of his Ninth on 30 symphony (composed in 1917 at a blissfully production line of the Eighth Symphony’s Sixth Symphony to its surprising conclusion, August, that while the Seventh (‘Leningrad’) rustic distance from the year’s revolutionary terrifying toccata. The Ninth now pays cocking a snook at the victory parade. Here, and Eighth Symphonies had been ‘tragic- upheavals). But the theme has a little twist compressed homage to that giant’s Shostakovich becomes once more the Soviet

10 Programme Notes 9 February 2020 Dmitri Shostakovich in Profile 1906–75 / profile by Andrew Stewart

Till Eulenspiegel, like Prokofiev at the end his Second Symphony was dedicated to the the score to the city. A microfilmed copy of his Fifth Symphony. Both were lucky to October Revolution of 1917. was despatched by way of Tehran and escape the hangman’s noose that befalls an American warship to the US, where it Richard Strauss’ prankster, but they knew Shostakovich announced his Fifth Symphony was performed and broadcast by the NBC their audiences would be pleased with a of 1937 as ‘a Soviet artist’s practical creative Symphony Orchestra and Toscanini. In final bout of excitement in a resounding reply to just criticism’. A year before its 1943, Shostakovich completed his Eighth major key. • premiere, he had drawn a stinging attack Symphony, its emotionally shattering music from the official Soviet mouthpiecePravda , compared by one critic to Picasso’s Guernica. OPERA BUFFA in an article headed ‘Muddle instead of music’, in which Shostakovich’s initially In 1948, Shostakovich and other leading • Opera buffa is a genre of comic opera successful opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk composers, Prokofiev among them, were that proliferated in 18th-century Italian was condemned for its extreme modernism. forced by the Soviet cultural commissar, opera. Contrasting with opera seria, it ‘It is leftist bedlam instead of human Andrei Zhdanov, to concede that their represented everyday life (instead of music’, the article claimed. When the Fifth work represented ‘most strikingly the mythological stories) and placed fewer Symphony was premiered in Leningrad, formalistic perversions and anti-democratic technical demands on singers with simpler the composer’s reputation and career were tendencies in music’, a crippling blow to music that actors could perform. rescued. Acclaim came not only from the Shostakovich’s artistic freedom that was Russian audience, who gave the work a healed only after the death of Stalin in 1953. YEVGENY MRAVINSKY 1903–88 reported 40-minute ovation, but also from Shostakovich answered his critics later that musicians and critics overseas. year with the powerful Tenth Symphony, • Born in St Petersburg, Mravinsky began ollowing early piano lessons with in which he portrays ‘human emotions and his musical career as a rehearsal pianist for his mother, Shostakovich enrolled With the outbreak of war against Nazi passions’, rather than the collective dogma the Mariinsky Theatre. Recordings reveal at the Petrograd Conservatory in Germany in June 1941, Shostakovich began of communism. he had extraordinary control over dynamics 1919. He supplemented his family’s meagre to compose and arrange pieces to boost and frequently changed tempo for effect. income from his earnings as a cinema pianist, public morale. He lived through the first A few years before the completion of his In the words of critic David Fanning, ‘The but progressed to become a composer months of the German siege of Leningrad, final and bleak Fifteenth String Quartet, Leningrad Philharmonic [played] like a wild and concert pianist following the critical serving in the auxiliary fire service. Shostakovich suffered his second heart stallion … at any moment it may break into success of his First Symphony in 1926 and attack and the onset of severe arthritis. such a frenzied gallop that you hardly know an ‘honourable mention’ in the 1927 Chopin In July, he began work on the first three Many of his final works – in particular whether to feel exhilarated or terrified.’ International Piano Competition in Warsaw. movements of his Seventh Symphony, the penultimate symphony (No 14) – are Over the next decade, he embraced the completing the defiant finale after his preoccupied with the subject of death. • ideal of composing for Soviet society and evacuation in October and dedicating

Composer Profile 11 Gianandrea Noseda conductor

ianandrea Noseda is one of Teatro Regio Torino, where his leadership the world’s most sought-after and his initiatives propelled the company’s conductors, equally recognised global reputation. for his artistry in the concert hall and opera house. He was named the National During the 2019/20 season, Noseda will be Symphony Orchestra’s seventh Music a guest conductor of the Bavarian Radio Director in January 2016, beginning his Symphony Orchestra, Danish National four-year term in the 2017/18 season. Symphony Orchestra, Filarmonica della In September 2018, his contract was Scala, Orchestre National de France, extended for four more years through Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa to the 2024/25 season. In 2019, Noseda Cecilia, Philharmonia Zurich, Rotterdam and the NSO earned rave reviews for their Philharmonic, Tonhalle Orchestra and the first concerts together at Carnegie Hall in Vienna Symphony Orchestra. New York. The 2019/20 season sees their partnership continue to flourish with twelve Noseda has an extensive discography weeks of concerts at the Kennedy Center – of over sixty recordings for Chandos and including performances of Beethoven’s nine Deutsche Grammophon, among others. He symphonies – the launch of a new recording is closely involved with the next generation label to be distributed by LSO Live and their of musicians through his work as Music first overseas tour together to Japan and Director of the Tsinandali Festival and China in March 2020. Pan-Caucasian Youth Orchestra, which just concluded its inaugural season, as well as Noseda also serves as Principal Guest with other youth orchestras, including the Conductor of the London Symphony European Union Youth Orchestra. Orchestra and Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Principal Conductor of the Orquestra de A native of Milan, Noseda is Commendatore al Cadaqués, and Artistic Director of the Stresa Merito della Repubblica Italiana, marking his Festival in Italy. In the 2021/22 season, contribution to the artistic life of Italy. In 2015, Noseda will become General Music Director he was Musical America’s Conductor of the of the Zurich Opera House, where he will Year, and was named the 2016 International lead his first Ring cycle. From 2007 to 2018, Opera Awards Conductor of the Year. • Noseda served as Music Director of the

12 Artist Biographies 9 February 2020 Roman Simovic violin

oman Simovic’s virtuosity and Nights (St Petersburg), Moscow Easter musicality have led to him Festival, BEMUS and NOVUS (Serbia), performing on many of the world’s and Dubrovnik Summer Festival (Croatia), leading stages, including the Moscow collaborating with artists such as Leonidas Tchaikovsky Conservatory, the Mariinsky Kavakos, Evgeny Kissin, Yuja Wang, Gautier Concert Hall (St Petersburg), Shlomo Capuçon, Antoine Tamestit, Mischa Maisky, Lahat Opera House (Tel Aviv), Victoria Simon Trpčeski and Janine Jansen. He has Hall (Geneva), the Rudolfinum (Prague), presented masterclasses in the US, UK, the Seoul Arts Center, Grieg Hall (Bergen), South Korea, Serbia, Montenegro, Israel and and the Rachmaninov Concert Hall of the Italy. His discography includes three discs Moscow State Conservatoire. He has been directing the LSO String Ensemble, and a awarded prizes at numerous international recording of the Tchaikovsky and Glazunov competitions, including the Premio Rodolfo concertos with Valery Gergiev and the Lipizer (Italy), the Tibor Varga International Mariinsky Orchestra, completed in 2018, and Violin Competition Sion Valais (Switzerland), a recording of Niccolò Paganini’s 24 Caprices and the Henryk Wieniawski Violin for solo violin, captured by LSO Live. Competition (Poland), placing him among the foremost violinists of his generation. Roman Simovic is the leader of the London Symphony Orchestra. He plays a 1709 As a soloist, Roman has appeared with Antonio Stradivari violin, generously loaned some of the world’s leading orchestras, to him by Jonathan Moulds. including the London Symphony Orchestra, Mariinsky Theatre Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and the orchestra of the Teatro Regio di Torino, with conductors including Valery Gergiev, Sir Antonio Pappano, Daniel Harding, Gianandrea Noseda, Kristjan Järvi, Pablo Heras-Casado, John Wilson, and the late Jiří Bělohlávek. He has performed at numerous festivals, including Verbier (Switzerland), Bergen (Norway), White

Artist Biographies 13 Gianandrea Noseda on Russian Roots

Principal Guest Conductor Gianandrea Noseda reflects on his Shostakovich symphony cycle and how music speaks to us today.

In the 2019/20 season, we’ll perform the and to record Shostakovich in 2019 and 2020 Sixth, Seventh and Ninth Symphonies, which is different, because the world is different, are three of the four ‘War’ Symphonies because we are different. written during World War II. The Seventh coincided with the Siege of Leningrad, and — you can hear the march of the soldiers, the Each interpretation tells the story of obsessive repetition, a loop you cannot escape. But with the Ninth, Stalin wanted its own time … because the world is a celebration of the victory of Russia, different, because we are different. and Shostakovich came out with a sort of — opera buffa symphony – short, witty, lots of sarcasm. I can really feel his wish to go Shostakovich speaks equally to us today. against what was expected of him. I think art has this quality, this strength, to always be fresh. We tell stories that cycle of symphonies gives the Conducting a cycle with one orchestra — connect with us as human beings. As long ‘ complete picture. It’s storytelling also allows you to grow together, not just Shostakovich is one of the most as humankind occupies this planet, we will of [Shostakovich’s] life, but also as artists, but in the knowledge of the always love each other, hate each other, of what was going on in the history of the composer. Shostakovich is one of the most important symphonists. He knows how feel compassion, suffer … the infrastructure world in the 20th century. It’s fascinating to important symphonists. He knows how to use the orchestra, the instruments, of our lives may be different, but we belong see how an artist like Shostakovich reacted to use the orchestra, the instruments, the the combination of sounds. to humankind.’ • to that – how, with art, he tried to be true combination of sounds, but because of to himself, while also trying to accomplish that the music is incredibly demanding. — Listen to the cycle so far on LSO Live, the dictates of the Soviets. You have to find It requires stupendous virtuosity, and the It’s important that we continue to hear and featuring Symphonies Nos 4, 5 and 8. your way, to make your personal voice heard. LSO is that kind of orchestra. You have to perform this music. It’s not superfluous to • lsolive.co.uk When you listen to Shostakovich, it doesn’t keep the emotional charge without losing create another disc, another cycle, because sound out of fashion – it sounds important technical control. each interpretation tells the story of its own for our lives today. time. To record Shostakovich in the 1970s JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER ORCHESTRA WITH WYNTON MARSALIS Saturday 30 & Sunday 31 May, 7.30pm ynton Marsalis and Sir Simon The ‘La Esquina’ movement pays homage to Barbican Rattle blend jazz, blues and the city’s Afro-Latin culture while the work’s classical music in this crossover finale sees wailing brass spin bold melodies Wynton Marsalis Symphony No 4, collaboration with the Jazz at Lincoln over rhythmic riffs. Like the (second) ‘The Jungle’ Center Orchestra. greatest city in the world, this intoxicating cacophony of sounds, cultures and identities Plus Big Band classics with the Jazz at Wynton Marsalis’ Symphony No 4, ‘The will leave you thinking. Lincoln Center Orchestra Jungle’ is a portrait of New York City in all its dazzling, cosmopolitan glory. Featuring Produced by the LSO and the Barbican. Part of the Sir Simon Rattle conductor glimpses of ragtime and dance music, LSO’s 2019/20 Season and Barbican Presents. Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra its six movements combine rapid and with Wynton Marsalis hard-swinging passages with poignant London Symphony Orchestra blues-tinged melodies and colourful, plushly orchestrated jazz chords. London Symphony Orchestra on stage tonight

Leader Second Violins Cellos Flutes Trombones LSO String Experience Scheme Carmine Lauri Julián Gil Rodríguez David Pia Gareth Davies Rebecca Smith Since 1992, the LSO String Experience Thomas Norris Alastair Blayden Victoria Daniel James Maynard Scheme has enabled young string players First Violins Sarah Quinn Jennifer Brown from the London music conservatoires at Clare Duckworth Miya Väisänen Noel Bradshaw Piccolo Bass Trombone the start of their professional careers to gain Ginette Decuyper Matthew Gardner Eve-Marie Caravassilis Patricia Moynihan Paul Milner work experience by playing in rehearsals Laura Dixon Naoko Keatley Daniel Gardner and concerts with the LSO. The musicians Gerald Gregory Alix Lagasse Hilary Jones Oboes Tuba are treated as professional ‘extra’ players Maxine Kwok Belinda McFarlane Amanda Truelove Juliana Koch Ben Thomson (additional to LSO members) and receive fees Claire Parfitt Iwona Muszynska Judith Fleet Rosie Jenkins for their work in line with LSO section players. Elizabeth Pigram Csilla Pogany Francois Thirault Timpani Laurent Quenelle Andrew Pollock Clarinets Nigel Thomas The scheme is supported by: Harriet Rayfield Paul Robson Double Basses Chris Richards The Polonsky Foundation Sylvain Vasseur Mariam Nahapetyan Graham Mitchell Chi-Yu Mo Percussion Derek Hill Foundation Rhys Watkins Alain Petitclerc Colin Paris Neil Percy Idlewild Trust Richard Blayden Patrick Laurence Bassoons David Jackson Barbara Whatmore Charitable Trust Dániel Mészöly Violas Matthew Gibson Daniel Jemison Sam Walton Thistle Trust Hazel Mulligan Edward Vanderspar Thomas Goodman Joost Bosdijk Zachary Spontak Gillianne Haddow Joe Melvin Harp Malcolm Johnston José Moreira Horns Bryn Lewis German Clavijo Benjamin Griffiths Timothy Jones Stephen Doman Angela Barnes Carol Ella Alexander Edmundson Julia O’Riordan Flora Bain Robert Turner Editorial Photography Luca Casciato Trumpets Ranald Mackechnie, Chris Wahlberg, Nancy Johnson Philip Cobb Harald Hoffmann, Marco Borggreve Peter Mallinson Kaitlin Wild Print Cantate 020 3651 1690 Cynthia Perrin Advertising Cabbells Ltd 020 3603 7937

Details in this publication were correct at time of going to press.

16 The Orchestra 9 February 2020